BATON ROUGE – “Yay merrily, a sampler of wonders,” said ESPN anchor Lee Leonard at 6 p.m. central time on Sept. 7, 1979, when the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network launched from a small studio in Bristol, Connecticut.

“Why Bristol? Because here in Bristol is where all the sports action is as of right now,” Leonard said that night - http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=3528756.

That action has remained there in iconic, da-da-da, da-da-da fashion for 35 years.

“If it takes an interview, we’ll do it,” SportsCenter host George Grande said moments later. “If it takes play-by-play, we’ll do it. If it takes commentary, we’ll do that, too.”

Will Aug. 14, 2014, also live in infamy?

The Southeastern Conference Television Network will kick off at 5 p.m., Thursday, Aug. 14, 2014, from a luxurious studio in Charlotte, N.C.

“I’ve seen that ESPN opening,” SEC associate commissioner for communications Herb Vincent said Friday from the SEC’s main offices in Birmingham, Alabama. “I can’t tell you who or what will be the first thing you see on the SEC Network. Maybe I know. Maybe I don’t. You’ll have to watch.”

The SEC Network will be on a cable station near you, particularly if you live in the SEC footprint as most reading this do. Contact your local cable provider for details. Then again, you may already have the SEC Network playing stock footage of stadia and statues around the 14-team league, which is currently playing on Channel 607 if you subscribe to AT&T U-Verse.

“The schedule for the first 24 hours has not been released yet,” Vincent said. “But there will be a lot of whip-around coverage of the 14 schools.”

And there figures to be a lot of people watching.

“What is most impressive about the network is how many homes it is already available to before it has even started,” said Vincent, who left an associate athletic director’s job at LSU in May of 2013 for the SEC.

“The fact that it will be available to more than 90 million homes is a remarkable accomplishment,” Vincent said. “Number one, that shows the passion of SEC fans. Number two, it shows the expertise of ESPN.”

The SEC Network is married to ESPN, which also appears on the key-shaped SEC Network logo with “ESPN” on the part of the key that clicks open a door.

“ESPN and SEC are two of the strongest brands of television and sports in the country,” Vincent said.

The SEC, which has produced seven of the last eight BCS national champions in football, and ESPN have managed to attract a murderer’s row lineup of cable providers that will light up televisions sets far outside the SEC boundaries of Texas, Missouri and South Carolina. On board to bring SEC football and other sports to America are such household mega brand names as DIRECTV, DISH, Time Warner Cable, AT&T U-Verse, Cox Communications and Comcast Cable, which is the nation’s largest video, high-speed Internet and phone provider to residential customers.

“AT&T U-Verse and the DISH Network make the SEC Network available to everyone nationwide,” SEC commissioner Mike Slive said during his opening address at the SEC Media Days last month. “Football is just one of the sports the network will cover. In our first year alone, we will carry more than 100 men’s basketball games, 60 women’s basketball games, 75 baseball games and 50 softball games.”

The SEC Network has no plans to carry Australian Rules Football as did ESPN in the early years or professional slow pitch softball, which was the first live sporting event on ESPN on Sept. 7, 1979.

The first SEC football game on the SEC Network will have Texas A&M at South Carolina at 5 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 28, followed by Temple at Vanderbilt at 8:15 p.m. LSU, which opens the season against Wisconsin in Houston on ESPN at 8 p.m. on Aug. 30, debuts on the SEC Network against Sam Houston State on Sept. 6 in Tiger Stadium. All 14 teams will have played on the SEC Network at least once through the first four weeks of the season in addition to other league games on either CBS or ESPN.

A specific program on opening night that Vincent did choose to discuss is another installment of “SEC Storied,” which has appeared on ESPN in recent years. At 8 p.m. Thursday, “The Stars Are Aligned” will air, featuring celebrities from each of the 14 SEC schools, including political strategist James Carville for LSU, former Hootie & the Blowfish lead singer Darius Rucker for South Carolina, actress Ashley Judd for Kentucky and Texas governor Rick Perry for Texas A&M.

“You’ll want to watch that,” Vincent said.

LSU fans, still smarting over a perceived Alabama bias in SEC football scheduling, should not have any such bias to fret about concerning SEC Network programming.

“There has been a concerted effort to make programming equitable for all 14 schools,” Vincent said.